Bag of Randomness for Thursday, April 7, 2016

ahbncookies

  • I got a neighborhood email detailing a story of how a woman left her purse in her car as she went inside the post office and came back to find her car broken into and the purse missing and then warned us all to be careful. That just seems too common sense to me, I take my purse with me where ever I go, it’s on my person at all times except when I’m at home.
  • WifeGeeding told me a friend’s mother-in-law broke her wrist after stepping in a pothole and falling down. Being the sensitive person that I am, I simply said, “Ohhhh no….I’m a pothole.”
  • My neighbor that is employed (at least currently) by our local NFL franchise is having his house painted. When I checked the mail yesterday, he just parked in front of his abode and then gave all the paint crew Gatorade. He really is a nice, humble man.
  • Yesterday morning I was driving home after dropping DaughterGeeding off at school and noticed a lot of dark smoke coming from the DFW Airport area and mentioned it in a tweet without tagging or mentioning anyone. To my surprise, someone manning the DFW Airport Twitter account replied back to my tweet and addressed me by my first name letting me know it was just a training exercise. I was impressed by the professionalism and the kindness. However, my name doesn’t appear on my Twitter handle or description, so I’m surprised they found it.
  • I can’t remember if I shared this story, but WifeGeeding was recently at our local public library in the children’s section. She was on both her knees looking at books on the lower shelves when some man walked up to her and told her she was bowing in the wrong direction for Mecca. It took her a bit to process what he said and left her taciturn.
  • DaughterGeeding is learning about the planets at school and she asked me what was the hottest planet. As a fan of space, I thought I knew the correct answer and said, “Mercury, because it’s closest to the sun.” It turns out, I’m wrong. Because Mercury is the closest, it has no atmosphere, which is a contributing factor.
    • We know that Venus, the second planet away from the sun, is on the average 30 million miles farther from the sun than Mercury. The natural assumption is that being farther away, it must be cooler. But assumptions can be dangerous. For practical consideration, Mercury has no atmosphere, no warming blanket to help it maintain the sun’s heat. Venus, on the other hand, is shrouded by an unexpectedly thick atmosphere, about 100 times thicker than our own on Earth.
  • The ‘CBS Evening News’ had an interesting story about the Coachella Valley school district in California. The superintendent is a big believer in technology, but 95% of the students live below the poverty line. A lot of students need Internet access but he found many students resorting to sitting outside a Starbuck or outside the school building at night just to get Wi-Fi. To solve the problem, he turned school buses into Wi-Fi hotspots and they are parked in eight different locations, one right outside a trailer park.
  • JFK’s asassination saved Liberace’s life – On November 22, 1963, he suffered renal failure, reportedly from accidentally inhaling excessive amounts of dry cleaning fumes from his newly cleaned costumes in a Pittsburgh dressing room, and nearly died. He later said that what saved him from further injury was being woken-up by his entourage to the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
  • Don’t Mess With Texas’ turns 30 years old – This week the iconic “Don’t Mess with Texas” campaign celebrates 30 years of discouraging Texan litter bugs from trashing the highways and byways of the Lone Star State. The Texas Department of Transportation launched the campaign in 1985, with the first television ads running during the Cotton Bowl in January 1986.
  • The teaser trailer for Star Wars: Rogue One is supposed to drop this morning.
  • NBC’s newest Law & Order spinoff is a true crime anthology series
    Law & Order: True Crime will start with the 1989 Menendez Brothers murders
  • My profession is to keep this kind of stuff from happening – Honda accidentally charges many customers twice for single car payment
  • Russell Crow is hosting SNL. If I were a writer, I’d be scared of offending him, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that can take a joke.
This entry was posted in Personal. Bookmark the permalink.

10 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Thursday, April 7, 2016

  1. John Mackovic says:

    …and that's why I don't do autodraft.

  2. Ben W. says:

    Audrey Hepburn = Kryptonite.

    Rogue One trailer is out now. I didn't know how excited/interested I would be. Now, I cannot wait. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wji-BZ0oCwg

    Quote of the day: This is a rebellion, isn't it? I rebel.

    Venus can thank its "runaway greenhouse effect" for it's insanely high temps. It's often used as a worst-case scenario example for climate change.

    When I was in high school, we played selections from Gustav Holst's "The Planets," and our director explained to us how ironic it was that the piece for Venus was so calm and soothing, since that's what the planet looks like, when in reality the surface is hot enough to melt lead.

    Kudos to the Coachella Valley superintendent. That's an educator who cares about educating. We need more of those.

  3. Towski says:

    Oh, lot's of personally knowledge content for me today!

    Once again back to the friendly neighborhood geography major. Venus is hotter because of the greenhouse effect. Here's an earth centric graphic:
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/th

    Also, on the Don't Mess with Texas campaign, I recently got to meet Tim McClure, the man behind Don't Mess With Texas. He's also the guy who did so many of those awesome Southwest billboards. He and his daughter, Allison, recently did, pro bono, the rebrand of the amazing non-profit I work for. Here's a shameless plug:
    http://wingsdallas.org/

    Oh, and we still need to go get barbecue.

  4. WGII says:

    Your Honda story is EXACTLY why I don't have any automatic debits from my bank account.

  5. Ben W. says:

    Easy solution to auto-debit problem: set up all auto drafts on a credit card (with a good rewards program), and then pay it off every paycheck. You never pay interest, you rack up rewards points, and if there's ever a multiple-draft situation, it's much easier to sort out. Win/win/win. We've been paying every single expense we have this way for years, and it's amazing how many rewards points you can rack up.

    Plus, our credit-card company sends us an annual report every year breaking down all of our expenses by category, which makes for a very interesting/helpful budgeting tool.

  6. DF of LL says:

    "taciturn"…..wow……..just……..wow.

    And on an IT note, Yahoo! fantasy sports supports Pro leagues, where players can all post an entry fee and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams in a given league win the cash.

    Their fantasy basketball season is coming to an end, but some leagues play thru the last day of the season which is 4/13.

    But…..

    Somebody in IT didn't get the memo, and the payout job ran on Tuesday night of this week, paying off winners of some leagues where the winner has yet to be determined.

    Ooops!

  7. ALEC says:

    Better than any of the RTGs from that lawyer.

Comments are closed.